Jane Weinkrantz

I wasn't exactly sure what to expect as I'd only gone to one prior pitch conference and it was much shorter, but this is the conference you need for some unvarnished truth and all the inside dish you won't find anywhere else. Paula tells it like it is. ("You all need to work on your titles!) She gave us a look into her process as a writer and as an agent. This was an extremely helpful four days. I 'm taking Paula's advice and letting my subconscious do the writing for a week before I return to my keyboard, but she and the other agents and editors have given me much to think about. I would definitely recommend New York Write to Pitch.

This is being completely re-written.

Hi, all! I'm Jane Weinkrantz and I'm excited to share the framework of my novel. Novel: The Diamonds of Callie Harbor Story Statement Four teenage girls, Clarissa, Amy, Kathleen and Rosemary, struggle to overcome familial and societal expectations and take control of their own lives as they confront teen pregnancy, dysfunctional families, academic pressure and body image issues in 1977 in the small town of Callie Harbor on Long Island’s South Shore. (My novel has four protagonists and alternating third person POVs.) Antagonists: Frederick Eckhart, Clarissa’s father, is a snooty college professor who wants his brilliant daughter, Clarissa, to transfer out of the public high she loves to the prestigious Glosser Academy for gifted girls. Clarissa manages to stall him for a while, but when a drug bust occurs at Callie Harbor High, her father demands she change schools. Kathleen’s mother, Anita Quincy, is a narcissist married to an alcoholic who tries to forbid Kathleen from dating “Burnout” Bernard Leon, a boy with a history of addiction who is in recovery after nearly dying from mixing alcohol and Quaaludes. Anita is worried about how Kathleen’s relationship with Bernard reflects on her in their small town and is jealous of how well Kathleen gets along with Bernard’s mother. (Kathleen’s father is an unapologetic, philandering alcoholic who backs up his wife because it is easier than arguing.) Rosemary’s older sister, Beverly, is a beautiful former Homecoming Queen who is stuck in a boring job and unable to find a rich boyfriend after not marrying her high school sweetheart as she planned. Because she needs constant attention and admiration, Beverly sucks the joy out of all Rosemary’s accomplishments and manipulates Rosemary’s well-meaning parents to do the same. Breakout Titles The Diamonds of Callie Harbor Callie Harbor ‘77 Harbor Girls Comparable titles upmarket/book club fiction The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt Hook Line: There are four characters and they all have conflicts, so I wrote four hook lines. 1. A high school sophomore becomes pregnant and must choose between marrying her handsome, devoted boyfriend and traveling to Europe to study. (Amy) 2. When her parents forbid a teenage girl from seeing her recovering boyfriend after he overdoses, she must decide where her loyalties lie. (Kathleen) 3. After her beautiful, jealous older sister manipulates a young girl into going on a dangerous crash diet, she must learn to define herself without using her sister’s standards. (Rosemary) 4. An overachieving, eccentric girl must outsmart her father, a brilliant historian, when he demands that she leave her childhood friends and local high school to transfer to an all-girls academy for the gifted. (Clarissa) Inner conflict 1. Because Amy is the only child of a single mother, she has been very responsible from an early age so maturity and responsibility are key aspects of her identity. When she discovers that she is pregnant, it is impossible for Amy to see herself as anything but irresponsible. She imagines her mother’s disappointment and how the pregnancy will ruin the image her new stepfather has of their “perfect” family. 2. Kathleen's mother has raised her with the motto "never let them see you sweat," so Kathleen never lets her emotions show. However, she is holding in a lot of anger at her parents. Because Kathleen’s father is an active alcoholic, her mother forbidding her from seeing Bernard, who is in recovery, infuriates her because it is so hypocritical and feels so rooted in what people will think. Their already tense relationship worsens. 3. Rosemary always feels self-conscious about her body not only because it does not conform to her sister’s standards but because her curves draw unwanted male harassment. This makes her vulnerable to her sister’s challenge to lose weight quickly. 4. Even though she has three great friends in Amy, Rosemary and Kathleen, Clarissa knows she is quirky and a bit of an outsider in her school. The idea of transferring to a new school as a sophomore fills her with fears of loneliness. She also knows she will be valedictorian of her graduating class in 1980 and doesn’t want to throw away her hard work to be an average student at a fancier school. Secondary Conflicts 1. Amy must adjust to having a new stepfather and stepbrother. When her mother becomes pregnant and needs bedrest, Amy and her stepfather try to run the household together. She feels inadequate as she tries to be a housewife, student and girlfriend. Amy confronts her mother and tells her she is overwhelmed. 2. Kathleen is furious when Bernard’s mother dies and her mother yells at him, not realizing he is visiting because he is breaking the tragic news to Kathleen. Kathleen stops speaking to her parents and stays out of her house except to sleep. Her father asks for a truce, so the whole family can appear happy and go to a party together. Disgusted, Kathleen agrees. 3. When Rosemary gets too much attention at a party, her sister Beverly pulls her aside to tell her that she is embarrassing herself. However, Beverly’s real issue is that her high school sweetheart, Sam, is at the same party with a man with whom he is romantically involved and Beverly has realized that her goal of marrying Sam will never happen. With the help of her friends, Rosemary finally detaches from Beverly’s attention-seeking drama. 4. Clarissa decides to invite her Black friend Veronica to join the all-white high school sorority, Delta Sigma Delta. Although Veronica is voted in, when it is time for the members to visit her home in the Black section of Callie Harbor, the sorority’s racism becomes apparent. Veronica is embarrassed by the invitation and her father forbids her from letting white girls haze her. Clarissa must confront the fact that her ''sisters" are racists and find a way to apologize for putting Veronica in such an awkward position. Setting My novel is set in 1970s Callie Harbor, a fictitious small town on the South Shore of Long Island that represents a culture most people don’t think of when they think of Long Island. The most common contemporary Long Island stories depict a wealthy, (Nelson DeMille's Gold Coast books) often Jewish lifestyle (Compromising Positions by Susan Isaacs or the Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner.) However, there are many middle-class South Shore towns with rich histories and economies that were originally based on the Great South Bay, towns where kids still get their first boat before their first car and spend summers at the beach or fishing or clamming. Families tend to stay for multiple generations and if your family has lived there long enough, there might be a street with your last name. Even a small town can have a lot of facets, so within my novel, characters go to high school, go boating, haze freshmen at a convenience store, dance to Led Zeppelin at a Halloween party, say “I love you” in a boatyard, go skiing in upstate NY, visit a patient at a rehab program, attend a funeral, celebrate the prom at a catering hall, and attend a graduation at the school football field. Because the town is small, everyone knows everyone else, gossip travels fast and minor characters recur in different scenes. Callie Harbor is a place where the community newspaper, The Callie Harbor Crier keeps the residents up to date on hyperlocal events and all the women use the same beauty salon. A place so intimate and routinized can feel either comforting or suffocating and my characters experience both. As for the choice to set the novel in the 1970s, I wanted to depict the low-tech, post-hippie period in American history when abortion was legal, marijuana and other drugs were illegal but common, and sexism, racism and homophobia were very much baked into suburban life.